Sometimes Blue Is Blue

As much as I love a great story, I was actually never much of a fan of literature classes or the literature segments in English classes. Or maybe I should clarify and say I wasn't much of a fan of the common teaching approach, which usually focused on a "right" way to interpret the material in a story instead of letting readers make sense of the details in whatever way felt right to them. I agree that reading is important to critical thinking, but I don't think that means every reader has to walk away with the exact same feeling and message after reading a book. We could have had far better classroom discussions over the years if we had talked about the varying interpretations of different readers instead of focusing on teaching every student the "correct" interpretation. After all, sometimes a blue curtain is just a blue curtain.